Au revoir, Air Rendezvous

The organization behind the popular show winds down

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On Oct. 30, Kim Curry packed up her office at the
airport and carried out the last remnants of the Springfield Air
Rendezvous. The popular capital-city air show had been permanently
grounded, and, after 14 years as coordinator, Curry’s job was over. All that remained were three boxes of plastic
name-badge holders, a desk, a work table, and a Bush-Cheney bumper sticker
on one wall.It was a quiet end to an organization that for 24
years had made the skies over the capital city rumble, thrilling tens of
thousands of spectators. A few days later, Curry and her father, Harry
Holesinger, met with a reporter to talk about the Springfield Air
Rendezvous legacy. Holesinger, a retired Air Force major general and
former head of the Illinois Air National Guard, first became involved with
Air Rendezvous in 1984, and his wife, Dee,and daughter, Kim, both shared his passion. In those early days, Curry remembers wearing a wooden
sandwich board and walking around downtown to advertise the show. “Whatever it took, we did,” she says. Her involvement continued to grow over the years, and
after the 1993 event she became the de facto coordinator. “Between the ’93 and ’94 air show
we were somewhat in a world of hurt — almost $200,000 in debt. We had
no office; we had no files; we were in dire straits. For the first six
months, the Air Rendezvous office was my dining-room table.”Curry managed, however, to secure the Blue Angels,
the Navy’s precision aerobatic demonstration team, for the 1994 show:
“We talked to all the folks the air show owed money to and asked them
to bear with us. We thought we would pay off 50 percent of our debt with
the ’94 show.” Instead, the air show hit pay dirt that year. “It succeeded beyond our dreams,” she
says. “We not only paid off all the debt, we had seed money for the
following year.” The success landed Air Rendezvous office space,
donated by Capital Aviation, where the organization remained until last
month. “The 1994 board really went all out to produce a successful
air show.”In 1995 the U.S. Air Force’s Thunderbirds team
performed, followed in 1996 by the return of the Blue Angels. By then the
organization, which had been deeply in debt, was able to make sizeable
contributions to charities. “Prior to my arrival and ever since,
Springfield Air Rendezvous has been a team effort,” Curry says.
“There is not one person that can claim responsibility for its
success.”That said, Curry unabashedly credits her father as a
major factor in the show’s continuing success. The organization was
able to lean on Holesinger’s extensive military contacts, which
brought some of the latest aircraft here. Air-show fans may not come to see
an airliner on a ramp, but many will want to get close to an F/A-18 Hornet,
a Harrier, or a swing-wing B-1 strategic bomber. “It would have been impossible to produce [Air
Rendezvous] without the cooperation of the Air Force and Army Air National
Guard units in Springfield, Decatur, and Peoria,” Curry says. Also contributing to the event’s success was
the pool of promotional talent required to get the word out: the media and
other communications-services providers. Cooperative, coordinated, and
extensive marketing — not as critical in major metro areas with
built-in attendance — was essential here. “The media were very
good to us,” Holesinger says. The father-daughter team also praises Air
Rendezvous’ volunteer board and commends the cooperation of airport
officials. “Most people who start an air show don’t
have air-show-operations experience,” Holesinger says. “There
is a learning curve that improves with experience. Mistakes were made along
the way, and the Springfield Airport Authority was commendably patient with
the process. Over 24 years, we did not have to keep reinventing the same
wheel.” Curry estimates that she spent part of almost every
week of the year in the office or in the field, getting the next event
together. Developing new contacts was as important as using the resources
on hand. The look of the airport would begin to change three weeks before
the show as fencing and tents were erected and operations and phone lines
were relocated to trailers on the north side of the airport. “It was
a lot easier to tear it all down than it was to put it all up,” Curry
says. Holesinger and Curry are reluctant to name their
favorite performers, but they do have favorite moments. “In recent
years I would talk with crew members who were born and raised in
Springfield,” she says. “It always moved me when, say, the
pilot of a C-5, a former Springfield kid now based in Dover, Del., would
tell me he remembered coming to Air Rendezvous for years. To have
influenced many toward careers in aviation is probably our greatest gift to
the future. That gift, in the form of the Springfield Air Rendezvous
scholarship endowment, will continue well into the foreseeable
future.” The coming departure of 183rd Fighter Wing aircraft
and personnel from the airport was a factor in what many enthusiasts
consider the air show’s premature demise. “It weighed heavily on the organizers’
decision to close the show,” Curry says. Will the air show ever return? “I’m never going to say
never,” Curry says, but the signs are not promising. In January, the SAR board will meet to allocate funds
— half of the $60,000 on hand — to area charities. The other
half goes to the Lincoln Land scholarships. Legwork to finalize the
allocations is now under way. The show is known internationally, and Curry feels
that it would be extremely difficult to produce the same kind of event
again. Even if it was, it’s not likely to fly with the same name. “Every event runs its course,” Curry
says. “The cost of the event was becoming prohibitive. The writing
was on the wall. Why would we want to go in debt and owe everybody money
and then end it? We wanted to be good stewards of the Air Rendezvous name
and the event itself. It would not be fair to the community. Better to
leave too soon than stay too long.” Job Conger is a frequent contributor to
IllinoisTimes. He has posted pictures of the final Springfield Air Rendezvous
air show at www.aeroknow.com/GALLERY/sar06home.htm.